


you know i'm such a fool for you

by sloppybxtch



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier Being Idiots, Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier Bickering, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak is Bad at Feelings, Eddie Kaspbrak is a Little Shit, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier-centric, Gay Disaster Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Jealous Eddie Kaspbrak, M/M, Richie Tozier Flirts, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier is a Little Shit, Slow Burn, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, fuck that clown, sorta - Freeform, the coffee shop au that absolutely no one asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22568443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sloppybxtch/pseuds/sloppybxtch
Summary: Their first encounter had gone a little like this:“I have a latte for Edgar!”“It’sEddie.”“Eduardo, here’s your latte!”“It’sEddie, dickwad.”“Elvis!”“Fuck you.”--or: The year is 1997; Eddie is a stressed out pre-med major with a serious caffeine addiction, and Richie is the barista that loves to push his buttons. A Coffee Shop AU where these two idiots fall in love, one latte at a time.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 70
Kudos: 147





	1. human anatomy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nothing like human anatomy to bring two dudes together

Three things about Eddie Kaspbrak were universally true—his pre-med major was giving him ulcers, he treated his undiagnosed attention disorder with obscene amounts of coffee which probably didn’t help his undiagnosed anxiety disorder (after a childhood full of doctors poking and prodding at his outsides, he didn’t want some shrink poking around his insides too), and he was pretty sure that one day he’d strangle his regular barista and dump his body in the Hudson.

Every morning, at 7:30 (sharp) after his 5:45 run and 6:50 shower, he headed out of his shoebox studio and walked about five feet into the coffee shop below it. It was called The Naked Bean, which was a stupid name, but they had good coffee. It was also _extremely_ convenient for his daily commute (what with being literally directly under his apartment). And the prices weren’t ridiculous, he could manage to sustain his caffeine addiction on his shoestring student budget. The décor was cool, without being like one of those corny yuppie hot spots with super zoomed in pictures of coffee beans all over the walls. This place was full of movie posters, and concert posters, and potted plants, and a tasteful collection of figure drawings which were probably a reference to the shop’s name. Their signature roast was just the right mix of light and dark for Eddie’s particular tastes, and they made a mean lemon-poppyseed muffin.

As far as Eddie was concerned, The Naked Bean was nearly perfect.

Except for one glaring detail.

One tall, lanky, dumb detail. With stupid dorky glasses and a stupid goofy grin and a name tag that read RICHIE in a stupid scratchy scrawl.

This stupid dumb gangly detail that Eddie assumed was named Richie had started working there about three months after Eddie discovered the place.

Their first encounter had gone a little like this:

Eddie stepped up to the counter at 7:35 (he’d taken a longer shower than he usually did). The barista that up until that point he’d never seen before had leaned one hand against the counter and the other on his hip and had asked for his order in a stupid fake Southern drawl, and then for Eddie’s name. And once the coffee was ready, even though Eddie was the only customer in the place, he insisted on yelling:

“I have a latte for Edgar!”

“It’s Eddie.”

“Eduardo, here’s your latte!”

“It’s _Eddie_ , dickwad.”

“Elvis!”

“Fuck you.”

Eddie had stormed out the door and one thought replayed over and over all through his walk to the subway station: _I am never going back there again_.

The next day, he got there at 7:15.

—

Richie had been working at the Bean for four weeks, and Eddie had learned how to tolerate him. Sort of.

He poked fun at other customers, on occasion, but it seemed like Eddie was the focus of a special kind of attention that Richie reserved just for him.

It became a lot harder to get any work done when he could always see Richie milling about in the periphery, could hear him poke the other barista in the arm and tell her bad jokes until she let loose a peal of laughter and said, “beep beep, Richie!” as if that meant anything. Could hear him singing along to himself as he wiped down the espresso machines, the different voices he practiced on customers to make them smile (he was _really_ good at impressions, even though Eddie would rather drink sewer water than ever say that aloud), and all things considered, Eddie’s productivity levels dipped _severely_.

But it was all worth it.

Because the Bean had the best coffee, of course.

Richie was an annoying, too-tall, walking human tornado, but he was really good at making lattes.

Eddie decided that day to have his coffee there instead of taking it to-go, and settled down into a mid-century looking chair and table set arranged right beside the window, with a perfect view of the street. He had a paperback in his hands— _The Bridge_ , it was a book that Bill hadn’t been able to shut up about, so he lent it to Eddie to read as well. It was a little grim for Eddie’s taste, but the prose was good. And he had to get used to reading the scary stuff considering that none of the manuscripts Bill wrote could be described as easy reading.

There was another customer in the place, sitting in the back and listening to something on their MiniDisc Walkman, and the sidewalk outside was quiet. It was a rare lazy day, and from what Eddie could gather, the lack of excitement was driving Richie crazy. The dial on his jokemeter was turned up to ten, and apparently his zingers were getting mixed reviews from his red-haired barista friend.

Eddie wished he had a Walkman himself to drown out the noise.

He rolled his eyes, took a sip of his latte, and turned the page.

On the to-do list:

A) Get a portable music player and a good set of headphones or B) get a decent pair of earplugs, for days just like this one.

Richie started to sing to himself, and Eddie couldn’t help but look up. It seemed like he never could, like Eddie was always keeping his eyes on him, trying to predict what idiotic antics he’d come up next.

“ _Ooo-wee-ooo I look just like Buddy Holly_ ,” Richie sang off-key, gently whacking the other barista with a rag. She laughed, and he took one of her hands and spun her in a playful twirl as he sang, “ _oh-oh and you’re Mary Tyler Moore!_ ” He dipped her a little, and she laughed again, and the sound was contagious because before he could stop himself Eddie was laughing too, and Richie’s head whipped around. He was so surprised that he dropped the other barista a little, and once she righted herself she smacked his arm and said something that Eddie couldn’t hear with a knowing sort of look in her eyes.

Richie smiled, wider and goofier and happier than Eddie knew anyone could smile, looking at Eddie like making him laugh for the first time in four weeks was his biggest achievement, like he was a little kid at Christmas. Eddie felt himself smile back, and then he shrunk beneath that gaze, turning back to his book even though he wasn’t really seeing the words on the page anymore. His cheeks felt a little warm—from the coffee. The coffee was warm. So naturally his face would heat up. Naturally. 

Eddie smiled a secret little smile down at his mug and thought— _he makes really fucking good lattes_.

—

Eddie stopped ordering to-go entirely.

It was probably really good for his stress. Sometimes it was a good thing to just sit down and watch the city go by from the cozy spot by the window, a warm latte in his hand, Eddie supposed.

It could balance out the hectic go-go-go pace of his pre-med life, the routine that was crushing Eddie beneath its thumb, the endless essays and assignments and lab reports and quarterly academic assessments.

And if the days that he spent sitting in that cozy spot by the window, sipping a latte, watching the world go by happened to line up almost exactly with the days that Richie was scheduled to work a shift behind the counter?

Coincidence.

Just coincidence.

—

Midterms were rapidly encroaching, and Eddie just wanted to lay down and die.

 _Radius, ulna, tibia, fibula,_ ran through his mind constantly, like the most boring song in the history of forever. _Osteoblasts, osteocytes, osteoclasts, osteo-what-the-fuck-ever_

He _knew_ that he knew these terms, he _knew_ that he’d committed them all to memory, he _knew_ that this was the easy part—but he also knew that if he failed this midterm his grade for the rest of the semester would completely tank and he didn’t have the money to retake a class and he was barely hanging onto a C+ as it was and—

His head hurt.

He needed coffee.

He burst into The Naked Bean a little after noon, backpack slung over his shoulder, weighted down with books. He looked up to see Richie, wearing his stupid goofy grin, who hip-checked the barista already at the register out of the way so that he could be the one to take Eddie’s order.

It had been four months since Richie started working there, and the two had fallen into a sort of routine.

“Edmundo!”

“Not my name.”

“What brings your adorable face into this fine establishment?”

“Latte,” said Eddie, unable to form any words beyond a caveman’s vocabulary in his grumpy stupor. He threw a five dollar bill in Richie’s direction and without another word stomped over to his usual table by the window. He unloaded his book-bag with a huff, lined up his highlighters, clicked open his pen, and dove headfirst into pre-med hell.

The coffee helped. Cleared his mind a little, slowed the frenzied march of human physiology that swarmed through his skull. Skull— _cranial, frontal, occipital, ethmoid, parietal, and…and—_ fuck. Eddie groaned into his mug, and frowned when he went to take a sip only to realize it was empty. Shit.

Eddie fished for his wallet, about to head back to the counter and procure another hit of sweet, sweet caffeine—but then a latte was already slid in front of him. A hand— _phalanges, carpal, metacarpal—_ cleared his old mug, and Eddie looked up to see that the hand was connected a stupid gangly barista with a stupid sappy smile. “I—I didn’t—“

Richie shrugged. “This one’s on the house. Honestly, I’m afraid to see what kind of tiny angry cryptid you’d turn into if you went too long without it, so.” He backed up towards the counter, gave Eddie a boy scout salute. “Happy trails, Doogie.”

Eddie just blinked, brain too full of body parts to send words to his mouth, so he took a sip of his latte and armed himself with his highlighter, ready to charge back into battle against his physiology textbook.

Hours passed, and the mid October sky began to darken, and Eddie didn’t realize just how long he’d been there, slaving away over his textbooks, highlighter in hand. He and Richie had come up with a sort of unspoken system—Richie would notice whenever Eddie’s latte-supply ran low, refill it without a word, and when Eddie would reach for his wallet Richie would just joke about putting it on his tab.

Richie was still _dumb_. And still _stupid_. But he was maintaining Eddie’s required constant caffeine buzz, so Eddie wanted to kill him slightly less than he did the day before.

He was probably on his fourth latte, and sure that he was going to pull out half of his hair if he had to look at his textbook any longer, when he heard Richie say, “I’m Richie, by the way,” as he placed the fresh coffee on the table.

“I know,” said Eddie, pointing at his name tag. Richie looked down like he’d forgotten it was there.

“Yeah, but my friends call me Dick.”

“No we don’t!” The other barista—the pretty redhead with a pageboy haircut that Eddie discovered was named Beverly—said from behind the counter.

“Don’t listen to her, I’ve never seen her before in my life,” said Richie with a wave of his hand. “Anyway, yeah, all my friends call me Dick,” Richie raised his eyebrows. There was a gleam of something mischievous in his eyes.“You know, on account of my huge—“

“Oh my god,” Eddie groaned, flopped his head into his open textbook and banged it three times just to drive his point home. “Where’s his fucking off button?” He said into the pages as Beverly giggled, and he pretended not to notice the fluttering in his stomach when Richie’s laughter joined in.

By his fifth latte, Eddie was pretty sure he was losing his mind.

Every time he closed his eyes, he could still see sentences from his books swirling around on the backs of his eyelids, like they’d made a permanent impression. The other barista—Bev, Eddie had learned—slung her bag over her shoulder and headed out with a danish in her hand, and called out goodbyes to both of them as she left.

There were no more customers. It was just Eddie and Richie. And suddenly Eddie found it very hard to concentrate.

“Hey,” Richie said, and it made Eddie nearly jump out of his skin. “Woah, easy there.”

“Sorry, I just—“ Eddie waved at the open books around him like that was answer enough.

“Anatomy and physiology, huh?” Richie said, making a clicking sound with his tongue. “How’s it going?”

“I feel like my brain is melting.”

“So, as expected.”

Eddie groaned and banged his head against his book again.

“Need some help?”

Eddie snapped his head up. “Help?”

Richie shrugged. “Yeah. I’ve got my closing duties done, there’s no other crabby co-eds here— so, want some help?”

“From you?” Eddie hadn’t meant for it to be an insult, but by the way Richie’s eyes flashed with something he couldn’t name, Eddie realized the words had come out harsher than intended. “Sorry, I—“

“Eh,” Richie stepped back into his easy-going smile, waved off Eddie’s apology, “I get it. People see me and can’t believe that I was blessed with both beauty and brains.”

Eddie tried not to smile. And mostly failed.

“Seriously, I can help out if you want. I’d be bored out of my mind sitting here by myself anyway, and I aced this class when I took it.”

“You did?” Eddie asked, and moved around his books to make room at the table for Richie without even realizing.

“Mmmhmm. I know all 207 bones.”

“There’s only 206 bones—“ Richie waggled his eyebrows at him, “oh Jesus Christ.”

“Quiz me.”

“Quiz you?”

“Yeah. Quiz me. Point to a bone, any bone, and I’ll name it.”

Eddie pointed to a spot on his arm.

“Ulna.”

Another spot.

“Radius.”

Another.

“Humerus—come _on_ , Eduardo, you’re going easy on me.”

Eddie blinked. “So you’re good at anatomy.”

“I’m really good at anatomy.” Richie sat down in the chair opposite from Eddie, sprawled out, checked the watch on Eddie’s wrist instead of the one on his own. “And I’ve got two hours until closing, so take advantage of me.”

Eddie eye’s widened a little, and he felt a light flush— _sympathetic nervous response, adrenaline rushing, heart pumping more blood—_ spread across his cheeks because of the places his mind went when Richie said that. Richie noticed, his own eyes widened a bit behind his glasses, and he cleared his throat. “Um, you know.” He cleared his throat again, coughed the thought away. “So, Eddie Spaghetti, whaddaya say? How about we embark on a journey through the skeletal system together.”

“I’ll break your skeletal system if you ever call me Spaghetti again.”

“I’m hearing a solid yes.”

Richie wasn’t lying when he said that he could help, and they’d gotten so much done that the next day Eddie stormed back in with two more textbooks under his arm. He settled into his spot, opened up his notes, and returned the smile that Richie sent his way.

“What’ve you got for us today?” Richie asked as he handed Eddie his first latte of many.

“Organic chemistry and biology.”

Richie exhaled air through his teeth, “you always know what get's a guy going.”

They fell into a similar routine over the course of the next few hours—Richie kept Eddie supplied with an endless supply of lattes (“Made with loooove just for you, Eds,” Richie had said, poking Eddie in the cheek until Eddie swatted him away), and on his breaks or when the shop was slow he’d pull up a seat and they’d attack the complexities of human biology together.

Richie was just as frustratingly good at this as he was at anatomy, it was like his brain moved a hundred miles ahead, wrapped his mind around concepts in the time it took for Eddie to just read the sentence. And he was _so_ blasé about it, which just made Eddie want to strangle him.

But Richie was his lifeline to scoring a passable grade, so strangling was out of the question. At least until the quarter was officially over.

They spent just as much time studying as they did goofing off—or at least, Richie goofed off and Eddie tried not to show that he enjoyed it—and it felt like they were teetering on the edge of friendship; they were more than acquaintances, almost friends.

And after Richie locked up and they said goodbye on the stoop of the cafe, Eddie pretended that the jittery feeling he felt in his chest was just from a little too much caffeine.

—

“So?” Richie asked him a week later, once the rest of the customers had left and he’d locked the door and flipped the sign, pulling up a seat at Eddie’s table and resting his head on his elbows. Eddie just glanced at him over the top of his book.

“So what?”

Richie let out an exaggerated groan, leaned across the table to snatch Eddie’s book from between his hands. Richie read the title, frowned. “Horror, huh? Didn’t take you for a horror kind of guy.”

“Fuck off.“ The book had actually been lent to him by Bill, one of a whole stack of paperbacks currently sitting on his nightstand that Bill insisted was ‘research.’ “I have hidden depths.”

Richie grinned wildly, like the thought amused him more than anything else on the planet, and gave Eddie back his book. “I hear his endings suck.”

“Shut up, I didn’t ask you.”

Richie leaned his chin on his elbows again, kicked at Eddie’s shin from under the table. He was like a little kid sometimes, and Eddie knew that he should be annoyed, but something swelled up inside his chest instead. He fought back a smile. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“I _am_ working.”

“No, you’re bugging me.”

“Customer service is the most important part of the job, Eds.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sure thing, Spaghetti.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

Eddie reached over to flick Richie on the forehead, but Richie caught his hand before he could. Eddie’s brain stalled for a second, focused on their fingers, and Richie used this moment of weakness to lean across the table and pinch Eddie’s cheek. “Ugh, stop!” Eddie cried once his brain had decided to start firing neurons again. He swatted Richie’s hands away, and Richie fell back into his seat, laughing. “Shut up!”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“That’s a first!”

“Fuck you,” Richie said, but he was laughing.

“Fuck you!” Eddie shot back around a smile.

“Okay, Eddie, now that you’re done flirting with me—“

Eddie kicked Richie’s shin, he felt his face get all flustered. “Fuck off, dipshit, I am _not_ —“

“Let’s get back to the subject at hand.” Richie stilled, looked up at Eddie from beneath his glasses. “So?”

“So?”

“How’d the fucking tests go?”

“Oh.” Eddie closed his book primly, avoided Richie’s eyes and looked at his nailbeds instead. “They, uh…” He trailed off, spoke to the lines on his palm.

He didn’t have to look up to know that Richie had deflated a little. “Oh,” Richie said, Eddie could hear the uncertain half-smile in his voice, “that bad, huh?”

Eddie nodded, took a deep breath. “Yeah, Rich. I, uh…” He looked out the window. “I passed them all.”

“You fucking _passed_!”

“89 on biology, 91 on o-chem, 97 on anatomy and physiology. And I did fine on English Lit and Calculus, but I wasn’t worried about those.”

“Ninety-fucking-seven!”

“Ninety-fucking-seven.”

Richie leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest as he looked at Eddie with something like amusement, something like pride. “You had me going there for a second, you little fucking dick.”

“You’d know all about little dicks, wouldn’t you, Richie?”

Richie hollered with laughter, reaching over to ruffle Eddie’s hair before Eddie fought him off, trying to stifle his giggles. “That’s not what your mom said last night!”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck you!”

“Excuse me,” Eddie turned to the empty counter, yelled into the empty cafe. “Excuse me I’d like to talk to a manager, I’m being harassed by an employee over here, I’d like to file a complaint—“

Richie cleared his throat and put on a fancy manager Voice. Eddie was still surprised at how good he was at impressions. “Hello, Mr. Spaghetti, I am the proprietor of this establishment, would a chocolate chip cookie and a slice of super-crumb coffee cake ease your troubles?”

“Make it two cookies,” Eddie said solemnly, “and you’ve got a deal.”

Richie dutifully stood and put the snacks on a plate, set it between them. Eddie handed one of the cookies to Richie, and they split the coffee cake down the middle.

Richie kept telling jokes, and Eddie kept pretending that he didn’t find them funny, and they fell into a comfortable sort of rhythm. Eddie didn’t know the last time he’d laughed so hard. He felt unburdened, he felt like he was a kid again—or at least the way that he _should_ have felt as a kid, if he could have been like Bill or Mike, running carefree, scraping knees on pavement and tree branches and smiling all the while, unafraid of being dragged out to doctors all across Penobscot county so his mother could get seven second opinions on what virus it was exactly that was eating Eddie’s brain and making him question her infallible authority.

Eddie felt light. It was too easy to get lost in it.

“Hey Spaghetti,” Richie said, brushing crumbs off of his hands, “how about—don’t make that face at me, I know you secretly love the nicknames—how about I take you out for a drink?” He smiled at Eddie. “We gotta celebrate, man! You made those midterms your bitch.”

Eddie ignored the little flip his stomach did. “Yeah, yeah,” his voice was breathier than he expected it to be. “That’d be great.”

“Sweet,” Richie said, that wild smile still on his face, “I know this awesome little dive that doesn’t take I.D. so they’d let even a little munchkin like you sit at the bar.”

Eddie kicked Richie under the table again. “I’m 20, not 13, dickwad. And my birthday’s next month.”

“Like I said, little munchkin.”

“Okay, I’ll go, but only if the first round’s on you.”

Richie gasped like he was appalled, put a hand to his chest. “Eddie, who do you take me for!” He looked at Eddie for a second more, that unreadable smile still lighting up his face, before he stood up and bussed their table. “All right, let me just clean these off and we can blow this popsicle stand—“

Eddie nearly jumped out of his skin when someone rapped their knuckles against the window to his right. He leapt out of his chair so fast that it would have toppled over if he didn’t catch it and right it back onto its feet. “Jesus fuck,” he whispered under his breath.

The person who’d knocked didn’t look like an armed robber ready to storm the place, thank god—she was a girl about their age with long dirty blonde hair, crimped in sections and lightened in streaks by the sun. She had big cornflower blue eyes, and those eyes looked right at Richie.

“Shit,” Richie said from behind the counter, and Eddie waited for him to tell the girl that the cafe was closed, but instead he said, “shit, shit, _shit_ ,” as he vaulted across the counter. “Date night, I _totally_ fucking forgot. Shit.”

Oh.

Date night.

Eddie couldn’t move. He felt a little cold, a little heavy all over, like his shoes had sunk right into the tile and were pinning him in place. He racked his brain to identify the symptoms, to diagnose whatever malady he’d contracted that suddenly stole the air from his lungs and the words from his lips and made his heart drop all the way to the floor.

He was probably dying.

Date night.

Richie leapt to the front door, unlocked it with the keys he kept on a carabiner on his belt loop, and ushered the girl— _his_ girl—inside. Eddie made a painfully conscious effort to look casual.

“Hey,” the girl said to Richie. Her voice was soft and deep, kind of raspy. She was taller than Eddie: willowy and thin and although she was dressed in just jeans, Docs, and a denim jacket, Eddie thought she must have been a fashion model or some shit. Because this was New York. Because _of course_.

Date night.

“Hey,” said Richie, shooting her a smile that looked a lot like the one he’d shot Eddie before, a lot like the smile that felt like something special, something secret. _Jesus Christ, Eddie_. “So, um, I just gotta wash a dish and then I’m all yours. I, uh, ran behind.”

The girl grinned up at him. “You forgot, didn’t you?” She didn’t sound mad.

Richie smiled, sheepish. “Yeah, kid, I forgot. But just give me like, two minutes, okay? I’ll give you a leftover scone or whatever to make up for it!” He called out as he ran backwards into the back room to wash up.

“You’re lucky I love you!” The girl shouted after him, and he blew her an exaggerated kiss before disappearing behind the door. She laughed lightly to herself, it was a high and pretty sound, and then looked at Eddie. “Hi,” she said on a smile, perfectly pleasant. “I’m Sandy.”

Sandy extended her hand for a shake, and Eddie had to remind his muscles that their job was to move. After a second, he took her hand and shook it. She was warm and soft. Bangles jingled against her wrist as she moved.

“I’m uh, I’m Eddie.”

“You’re Eddie!” Sandy said around a wide smile, like she knew exactly who he was. “Oh my god, you’re Richie’s favorite regular.”

“Don’t tell him that, it’ll go straight to his head!” Richie yelled from the back.

“I am?”

“Yeah, he’s always talking about you.”

Eddie wanted to say, _he’s never mentioned you_ , but that would be bitchy, and Eddie had no reason to be bitchy to this girl who seemed like she was nothing but sweet and warm and wonderful and goddamn fucking perfect. So instead he bit those words back and said, “oh,” instead.

“How’d your midterms go?”

“My midterms?” Eddie echoed back, like he was incapable of forming a coherent sentence on his own. Stellar first impression.

 _Date night_.

“He killed it!” Richie yelled.

Sandy grinned at him, and Eddie felt caught in her smile. It was sunny, brilliant, a flash of even white teeth, and it made her cornflower eyes go all crinkly. “You killed it?”

Suddenly bashful, Eddie looked at the toes of his shoes. “Yeah,” he said to his Converse. “I, uh, well I passed them all.”

“Ninety-fucking-seven Sandy!” Richie yelled.

Sandy kept grinning at Eddie like she’d known him her whole life. “Hell yeah!” She cheered, and held her hand out for a high five. Eddie laughed a little, hollow, and gave her one. Her bangles jingled.

Something still coiled in his stomach, crawled beneath his skin. He felt all jittery.

Richie finished up whatever he was doing in the back and vaulted over the counter again. “Sorry, Eds,” he said, an apologetic half-smile on his face. His cheeks were a little flushed beneath his glasses. Richie picked up their jackets from the coat rack by the door and handed Eddie’s back to him. “Do you think we could do a rain check?” He asked, slinging an arm around Sandy’s shoulders and pulling her in for a brief sideways hug. Sandy giggled, and Eddie looked out at the street.

“Sure, Rich,” said Eddie, feeling like his stomach had turned to lead. “We can do a rain check.”

It was like the sun had come out on Richie’s face, and he nodded his head. “Rain check. Great. Tomorrow okay?”

“Tomorrow’s okay.”

“Great. Tomorrow.” Richie smiled at him for a second more, and then opened the door for the three of them to walk through. Eddie went first, stood awkwardly on the pavement, kicked at a loose pebble with his shoe. Richie didn’t move his arm from where it rested comfortably across Sandy’s shoulders, even as he locked the door behind them, and Eddie pretended not to notice, and pretended not to notice the easy way their bodies moved together.

Date night.

He felt really fucking dumb, he felt a dull ache behind his eyes.

“All right, tomorrow,” Richie said again, “meet here at closing, okay?”

“Sure.” Eddie stuffed his hands in his pockets as Richie and Sandy set off with a wave, he tried to look _anywhere else_ but his eyes could only focus on the casual drape of Richie’s arm around her thin frame, on the way Sandy wrapped her arm around his waist, the way he bent his head to murmur something to her, the way her laughter drifted back to Eddie on the wind, carefree as anything.

He walked inside, locked the door behind him, trudged up the stairs, and screamed into his pillow without knowing exactly why.

The next day, Eddie didn’t go down to The Naked Bean. He didn’t wait outside after closing.

He drew his blinds so he couldn’t see Richie out there, standing alone on the street.

He didn’t go the day after that, or the day after that.

A week went by before he stepped foot into the cafe again. It was busy, during peak morning hours, and there were five people in front of him in the line up to the counter. The whole time that he waited, _date night date night date night_ ran on repeat in Eddie’s head. Richie noticed that he was there while taking the order of an extremely stressed out man in a business suit, and kept glancing over in Eddie’s direction while helping other customers. Eddie didn’t glance back.

“Hey, Eddie,” Richie said, once it was Eddie’s turn. “Long time, no see.” His voice was too casual, too practiced.

“Yeah,” said Eddie.

“The usual, then?”

Eddie nodded and then said, “and make it to-go, please.”

He decided that he must have been mistaken when he saw what looked like a flash of disappointment fly across Richie’s face. “Oh,” Richie said, and he smiled, but it was dampened, like when someone throws a blanket over a lantern to dim the light. “Yeah. To-go. Sure thing.”

Beverly was working that day, she was the one making the drinks as Richie took the orders, and when she passed him his latte she tried to pass him a meaningful glare along with it, but Eddie just mumbled a “thanks” and looked at his feet. He glanced at cup on his way out, expecting to see the usual _Edgar_ or _Elvis_ or _Edwina_ , but instead EDDIE stared right back at him in a familiar scrawl. Eddie pretended like it didn’t hurt as much as it did—because what the fuck, it was his name, after all—but still. There was an ache. 

He shook off the feeling, brushed through the crowd and made it halfway down the block before he heard footsteps behind him.

“Hey! Eddie!”

He paused, inhaled through his nose, wrapped his hands around the cup and tried to draw all of its warmth into his body.

“Eddie.”

He turned around.

Richie stood there, about ten feet behind him, apron still tied around his waist. He looked a little lost, and a little sad, and maybe a little mad. Eddie pretended not to see.

He was getting pretty good at pretending.

“Hey, Rich.”

“Hey.”

They stared at each other for a too-long moment.

At the same time that Eddie started to say, “I’m sorry I haven’t been around,” Richie asked, “Are we good?”

Eddie blinked. “Yeah, yeah we’re good.”

“Okay,” Richie nodded, licked his lips. He turned slightly, like he was about to go back inside, but changed his mind halfway through the movement. “Because, well, I thought we had plans.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We’re good?”

“Yeah, we are, it’s just, something came up.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just,” the lie shot into Eddie’s mind immediately, and he couldn’t stop himself as he said, “something came up with my girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend,” Richie repeated, not a question directed at Eddie but more like a confirmation of something. Eddie couldn’t tell what emotion ran beneath his words, but he wanted to stand there, figuring it out.

 _Jesus fuck, Eddie, he’s just your barista_.

“Yeah, my girlfriend,” Eddie mumbled. Richie just stood, still as stone on the sidewalk, nodding almost imperceptibly to himself. It made Eddie want to squirm, so he clutched his coffee tighter. A moment passed, and then another. “Well, I, uh, I gotta—“ He jerked his thumb down the street behind him, a helpless gesture.

“Yeah, yeah, for sure, I, uh, I gotta—too.” Richie nodded again, and then turned around and disappeared back inside the café without looking back.

Eddie walked to his subway station, _date night date night date night_ still swirling around inside his skull, and he hated himself for caring.

For the next two and a half weeks, he only ordered lattes to-go.

—

“Eddie, absolutely not,” Bill said around the lip of his beer bottle, eyes wide with panic.

They were sitting on the tiny couch in Eddie’s studio, a take n’ bake pizza heating up in the oven, re-runs of _The X-Files_ filling the silence of his apartment. Subtitles scrolled across the bottom of the screen—somehow someone (Bill) had toggled that setting and none of them could figure out how to turn them off, and when someone (also Bill) gave the sage advice of just kicking at the T.V. until the subtitles went away, Eddie decided he could live with them just fine.

Eddie didn’t meet Bill’s eyes.

“Seriously, Eddie. _Do not call her_.”

“Why not, Bill? You’re the one who’s always telling me to get out of this place, to live a little?”

“Yeah, Eddie, but Jesus fuck, live a little with literally _anyone_ else.”

Eddie worried the little slip of paper between his fingers—it was torn out of a pink notebook, a phone number written across it with a metallic purple gel pen, along with “call me” in a careful, loopy hand. He’d held onto it in his backpack pocket for three weeks and was about seventy-seven percent sure he’d never use it. Until now.

“ _Eddie_ ,” Bill warned.

“Some of us aren’t like you Bill!” said Eddie. “Some of us don’t have fucking Alpha Kappa whatevers throwing themselves at us every other month! This is the only phone number I’ve ever gotten, so screw you, man.”

“Eddie, if that’s what this is about, you can get other phone numbers, trust me dude, the big brown eyes work so well for you—listen, Sarah’s got a friend, how about I set you up with—“

Eddie stood up and strode over to the landline in one fluid motion. The number was already half-way dialed before Bill managed to get off of the couch, and he immediately lunged for the phone. “No! Fuckin—fuck you, Bill!” Eddie held the phone above his head with one arm, shoved Bill away with the other.

“Dude, _come on_ , she’s crazy.”

Eddie pretended like he couldn’t hear him and finished punching in the digits.

“Eddie—“ Bill started, but Eddie held up a single admonishing finger.

The line picked up after one and a half rings.

“Hello? Uh, I’m Eddie Kaspbrak, from organic chemistry? I, um,” he looked over at Bill, who was miming frantic frenzied gestures that Eddie assumed translated to _hang up the fucking phone right now you fucking dumbass_. “I’d like to take you out to dinner sometime.”

Bill shoved his hands against his face and murmured, “Motherfucker,” from between his fingers.

“Great,” Eddie continued, “it’s a date. See you on Friday, Myra.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next update coming on feb. 6! be there or be square!
> 
> \--
> 
> (I was going to draw out their rivalry a little more but richie is too charming and they just wanted to get right into the friendship so just imagine eddie ignoring richie and richie trying really really hard to get his attention like, five days a week for four months, and that'll fill in the blanks)


	2. marty mcfly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> fellas, is it gay to imagine kissing your friend instead of your date? is it gay to flirt with him in front of all of your friends and a cat?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for some internalized homophobia!

Eddie Kaspbrak spent his 21st birthday squeezed into a booth at an Italian restaurant three blocks from his apartment, on what would probably go down as the most awkward double date in recorded human history.

Myra took up all the space in the room—not physically, although her size wasn’t exactly diminutive, but there was something about the way that she carried herself that left little air for Eddie to breathe.

Her normal speaking volume was a touch too girlish, like she was a woman gifted a booming voice who spent her whole life trying to sound young and delicate, but she laughed often. Her hair was peroxide-blonde, which Eddie decided was _by far_ the superior shade of blonde, and it flew all around her face in frizzy permed curls. She had nice blue eyes set deep in a round face, there was a rosy shine across her cheeks that Eddie decided was pretty, and her lips were small, coated with a layer of deep red.

Myra said his name like “Ed- _dee_ ,” and she’d ordered for him—in her defense, the pasta primavera truly was delicious— but he didn’t miss the sharp glance that came his way from Bill across the table.

There was something familiar about everything she did, and in some ways, that was a comfort.

Bill's date, Sarah, sat beside him, and she was undeniably pretty. Dark auburn hair—also permed, but much longer—was pulled away from her face in two big clips, and her lips were brown

(like coffee beans)

which Eddie assumed was very trendy. She was a proud sorority sister of Alpha Kappa Whatever and wore her Greek letters on a chain around her neck. Bill had his arm around the back of her seat. Eddie tried to mirror him.

This was his second date in as many weeks with Myra, after his impulsive (and ill-advised) phone call he made the day that Richie chased him to the street, and he was still learning how exactly to exist around her. He’d asked Bill to give him some advice, since out of all of his friends he was the one with the most experience—but that had gone about as well as Eddie expected. By the time he called up Mike and Ben, Bill had gotten to them first, and each had parroted back all of Bill’s concerns (albeit in a much gentler way) before hanging up with a quick, “just be yourself!”

So, frankly, Eddie was left completely in the dark.

He wasn’t used to this. To dating. He’d been asked to homecoming during his freshman year by a girl named Heather, who he’d spoken to a grand total of two times in his life up until that point, and his mom had driven them to the diner downtown where they went dutch on an order of chili fries (she’d also ordered a milkshake with two straws, but Eddie refused to share). His mother sat alone with a paperback romance novel at the booth behind them, and waited for them to finish up. Then she’d driven them to the dance, where they stood beside each other beneath the balloons without looking at each other and tried to fill the silence with a stilted conversation, until Heather made up an excuse to join her friends and Eddie stood with Ben at the punch bowl, watching Bill and Mike light up the dance floor with equal parts jealousy and relief.

Then, his mother had driven them to Heather’s home, where they shared a chaste peck on her porch while Sonia Kaspbrak kept the car running.

He’d gone to every dance stag after that.

It was kind of sad, Eddie supposed, that he hadn’t been on a date in six years, and he felt like a teenager again, too small on the inside to fill his growing body, all knock-need and wiry. He hadn't been _as_ unpopular in high school as he’d been in middle school, although he definitely wasn't at the top of the Derry High food chain. His eyes still took up about a third of his face, but suddenly girls _liked_ that, and his time on the track team toned his legs and tanned his skin and came with a new gaggle of jocks who would say hi to him in the hallway and give him high fives at lunch and only ever refer to him as “Kaspbrak!” (but never bat an eye when they saw schoolyard psychopaths spit slurs at him or press his face into the dirt behind the track until he cried.) 

There was just an unknown something about him that drove the girls away, or drove him away from any girl who showed interest. He was happy to keep to his comics and the Losers—Bill, Mike, and Ben—and he’d resigned himself to the knowledge that no girl would ever be up to Sonia Kaspbrak’s sky-high standards, so why try?

But now, at twenty-one, on his third date in his entire life, Eddie wished he’d given it a shot all those years ago, if only so he didn’t feel this squirmy and awkward and uncomfortable. Practice made perfect, track had taught him that, and when it came to stuff like this, Eddie was anything but. His leg bounced beneath the table. Myra’s small, soft hand landed on his knee to still it. He didn’t know why his leg felt cold beneath her palm.

“Eddie,” she said, tightening her grip just slightly, to get his attention. “Can I have a sip?” She gestured at his glass of red wine—he didn’t know the name for it, he ordered it on recommendation from Bill—but he was too wrapped up inside his own head to fully understand what she meant so he just nodded.

She reached across his body for his glass, brought it to her lips, made an appreciative smack with her lips, and then announced that she preferred pinot noir.

Eddie stared at the little half-moon of red that her lips left behind, and fought the urge to wipe it away with his napkin.

After a moment, Myra and Sarah excused themselves to go do whatever it was that girls did when they migrated in packs to the ladies’ room, and Eddie chose to keep focusing on that crimson half-moon instead of meeting Bill’s judgmental eyes. He didn't need to hear it straight from his lips to know exactly what Bill was going to say. 

“Dude,” Bill said after a moment.

“Mmm?”

“Eddie.”

“What?”

“Bro.”

“Did you seriously just say bro?”

Bill chose to ignore that and continued, “She seems great,” in a strained way which Eddie knew meant Bill thought she was anything but.

“Yeah, she’s quite lovely actually,” he said, and wasn’t sure yet if he believed it.

Eddie gave in as he gave one final glare to his wine glass. He swiped away the lipstick stain and any residue it left behind, streaking the white napkin with a smear of red.

“Eddie.” Eddie looked up. Bill leaned across the table, arms crossed, eyes solemn. “She’s someone your mother would approve of.”

Eddie swallowed the lump that formed in his throat around the sentence _your mother would approve_ and looked at the spot of skin between Bill’s eyebrows instead of meeting his gaze.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” asked Eddie, but his voice came out a little higher than he meant it to. “Shouldn’t you look for a girl you could bring home to your mother?”

“ _Eddie_ ,” hissed Bill, “you’re not stupid. Stop pretending like you are.”

Eddie opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but no words came out, so he closed it again.

“Eddie, _come on,_ man—“

Bill suddenly looked over Eddie’s shoulder and cleared his throat as Sarah and Myra returned, freshly powdered, lipstick evenly spread across their lips. Eddie didn’t meet his best friend’s eyes, but he scooted himself as far against the other side of the booth as he could, still felt that phantom chill on his knee from where Myra’s hand had sat, and pretended not to hate himself for it.

_Your mother would approve._

_Date night._

Eddie weighed both in his mind, and didn’t know which one stung the most.

After another few minutes of stilted conversation—another few minutes of Eddie looking everywhere but at Bill’s insistent, irritated expression—the waiter came by for the check. It was Eddie’s birthday, and Myra hadn’t made it a secret that she earned more than him at her part-time receptionist gig (it dominated the conversation on their first date), but she made no move for her purse (Eddie would later learn that she hadn’t brought her wallet at all). She didn’t even suggest going dutch on the bill, since she’d helped herself to a good portion of Eddie’s pasta and one long sip of his wine, but Eddie wasn’t sure if it was okay to be irritated by that. He didn’t know how any of this worked. He looked at Bill for help.

“Since it’s Eddie’s birthday,” Bill said pointedly, “I’ll pick it up.”

“Bill you don’t have to—“

Bill held up a hand, and Eddie immediately fell silent. Eddie and his friends had always looked up to Bill as a kid, and even after growing up he held a magnetism that just made the whole world hush, it seemed. “Hey, buddy,” Bill cast a glance at Myra that Eddie hoped wasn’t too pointed, but she was giggly and wine-flushed and Eddie doubted she’d even noticed, “I insist.”

Sarah pulled out a wad of dollar bills and some change, set it on the table. “I’ll cover tip,” she gave him a soft, friendly smile, “Happy birthday, Eddie.”

He decided he liked Sarah a lot after all.

They paid and said their goodbyes, and Myra held Eddie’s hand as he walked her to the subway, and didn’t let go until she’d tugged him off the train at her step and walked him all the way to the door of her building. 

Eddie’s palms started to sweat, the back of his mouth went all dry. His heart hammered— _sympathetic nervous response triggered the fight-or-flight instinct, heart beats faster to send more blood to the muscles and brain, lungs take in more oxygen, pupils dilate to improve vision—_

He couldn’t help but remember the concepts that hours of studying had pounded into his mind, but he also couldn’t help but remember lattes at the Bean, which lead to thoughts of—

He shook his head to clear it.

“Well, Ed,” Myra said, and the nickname felt wrong. “This is me.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, tugging back his hand so he could wipe his palms on his slacks. Myra took his nervousness as a sign of attraction—and for all he knew, maybe this _was_ what attraction felt like, maybe it was supposed to make you feel like you were a slide beneath a microscope that the whole world watched you through, like you were staring down the maw of a beast with too many teeth, like you were a little kid looking out into the darkness of a closet that engulfed you, like you were a square peg and she was a round hole and you wanted to fit together desperately but the edges didn’t fit, the corners didn’t match.

Myra was barely shorter than him, so their eyes were level as Eddie watched her face loom closer and closer and closer and—

He knew it was coming, but was still surprised when her lips met his. She wasn’t his first kiss—that title belonged to Heather from homecoming—but she was his second, and he supposed that this was what kissing was meant to be. There weren’t any fireworks, it was a little clumsy, he didn’t know what to do with his hands so they just stayed at his sides. He thought that the kiss with Heather had felt weird because he was fourteen, and when you’re fourteen everything feels weird. But at twenty-one, he couldn’t help but feel disappointed that the weirdness hadn’t worn off.

All his life he’d grown up on his mother’s favorite love songs, had been dragged by Ben to showings of John Hughes classics and the latest Nora Ephron flicks at the Aladdin (and had acted like he wasn’t enraptured by every single one), had heard countless lyrics blaring back at him from the speakers of his boombox or the 8track in Mike’s truck about the feeling of falling in love, the dizzying rush of a first kiss—and yet all he felt was a wet, firm press of skin against skin. Eddie tried to feel something, but there was nothing to feel. He realized that his eyes were still open—and the gospel of Ephron and Hughes had taught him enough to know that _that_ wasn’t right—so he squeezed his eyes shut and waited.

Nothing.

Myra moved her hand to Eddie’s shoulder, he kept his eyes tightly closed—and he felt something then. A flash of long fingers, the corner of a smile, the imaginary brush of a broad hand beneath his chin, smelling faintly of coffee, the press of glasses against Eddie’s cheek—

Wait.

Wait, what the fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck _fuck fuck_ —

Eddie pulled back from Myra with a start, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand like that could shake off the ghost of the someone he’d imagined kissing him instead. “Uh—“ he said, voice thick.

Myra’s cheeks were still rosy from the three glasses of wine she’d had at dinner, her eyes were half-lidded beneath her frosty eyeshadow. “Ed?” She said on a girlish laugh, “would you like to come upstairs with me?”

Fuck.

He knew that he _should_ want to, was the thing. He knew that he was a hot-blooded American male, and that all of the same movies that taught him that kissing was a) not something you did with open eyes and b) was meant to be some sort of magic had also taught him that hot-blooded American males loved going upstairs with their dates, and doing what two adults did in the dark.

Eddie knew that he should want to. But that didn’t stop the way it made his stomach turn.

It wasn’t Myra—he was pretty sure. She had a sweet sort of smile and a sparkle in her eyes and the flush on her cheeks must have been pretty in the streetlights, Eddie assumed. But it didn’t sit well.

“I’m actually cat-sitting for my friend, Ben,” Eddie said fluidly, shocked by how easy lies slipped off his tongue these days, “but thank you for a nice evening.”

Myra pouted a little, but didn’t press the matter. She looked down at Eddie’s lips expectantly, and Eddie realized she was waiting for a good night kiss, so he leaned over and gave her a chaste peck on the cheek.

( _eddie bear, aren’t you forgetting something?)_

“Uh, goodnight.”

Eddie knew that he didn’t want to go on another date with Myra, and yet a moment later his mouth opened and, “Are you free for dinner tomorrow?” came tumbling out.

_Your mother would approve._

_Date night_.

Myra’s smile was a flash of white in the yellow streetlight.

—

“So, she kissed you?” Ben asked about three hours later, after Eddie had gone back to his apartment only to find Bill and Ben already standing outside his door. Bill had ruffled Eddie’s hair and told him it was time to get the real party started, and when Eddie asked what they would have done if he stayed over at Myra’s—because that offer was _totally_ on the table _—_ Bill had just erupted into howls of laughter while Eddie glowered at him and called him an increasingly vulgar stream of insults.

They were at the bodega down Eddie’s block, picking up snacks and booze to take back to his studio. 80s hits played, tinny, over the speakers. Ben browsed the different six-packs of beer with a look full of so much thoughtful consideration it seemed jarringly out of the place in the flickering fluorescents of a beer aisle.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, leaning against one of the refrigerated doors. “She kissed me.”

Ben broke his focus to look up at Eddie in that earnest, hopeful way he’d done since they were kids. “And?”

Eddie shrugged. “And nothing, it was just a kiss.”

“Was it good?” Eddie saw that romantic glaze come over Ben’s eyes, like it always did when matters of love were brought into conversation or a Nora Ephron film was playing on ABC. While Eddie was indifferent to girls all through puberty and beyond, Ben was the opposite—it was like he was constantly searching for a connection, for that magic movie moment, for the violins to swell and the fireworks to go off and for the whole world to just come to a halt.

The problem was, Ben had about the same amount of experience that Eddie did—and that night, Eddie learned beyond a shadow of a doubt that love songs had lied to them their entire lives.

He shrugged again, looked down at the scuffed toes of his shoes. “Eh. Wasn’t bad.” It was a little bad. But that wasn’t Myra’s fault, none of this was because of _her_ , necessarily—it was something in him. Maybe he clung to the ideas he’d been spoonfed by every movie ever made, every pop song ever written. Maybe he was a little like Ben, so hungry for something heart-stopping.

“Barracuda” faded out on the radio, followed closely by the synth-heavy opening riff of “I Want to Know What Love Is” by Foreigner.

Jesus Christ. Right on fucking cue.

“C’mon, Ben, it’s not rocket science, just pick a six-pack and let’s dip.”

“But I want to make sure you’ll like it, Eddie. It’s your twenty-first.”

“Ben, I’ve had beer before, and all of it tastes like varying degrees of pisswater. I promise, I’ll tolerate whatever you pick.”

Ben looked thoughtful, his dimple poked through his cheek. “Do you know what Bill likes?”

“No idea. Where is Bill anyway?”

“Playing with the cat.”

Eddie looked over his shoulder to the counter, where Bill was in fact playing with the bodega cat, a tubby tabby named Pigeon. “Bill!”

Bill glanced over, Pigeon took this opportunity to swipe her paw against his hand and flop lazily, to the floor. “What?”

“Ben wants to know what kind of beer you like?”

“I don’t care! Oh, also, Eddie!”

Eddie raised his eyebrows, while Bill reached into his backpack and showed him a flash of what looked like a liquor bottle he’d tucked in there. “Whiskey! I picked it up on my way here. We’ll put some hair on your chest, buddy.”

Ben perked up at the mention of whiskey, finally grabbing a six-pack at random and holding it close to his chest. “Oh, Bill, that reminds me! I have this like, awesome trick to teach you guys. All we need are some lemons.”

“Right,” Eddie mumbled to himself, “we’ve got chips and beer, we just need Oreos—“

“—with peanut butter!—“

“Oreos, with peanut butter, and lemons. Anything else?” Pigeon had stolen Bill’s attention again, so Eddie took radio-silence as a definite no. “You get the Oreos and peanut butter, I get the lemons, yeah?”

Ben nodded and set off on his quest. Eddie set to work gathering three lemons (he squeezed each meticulously, to make sure that they were just the right amount of ripe) when the bell above the door jangled. Eddie didn’t think twice about it, until he heard a familiar voice call out to the cashier, “Evenin,’ Carlos, playing only the good stuff for me, huh?”

It wasn’t—

“Good to see ya, Richie,” said Carlos, on a laugh.

Motherfucker.

Eddie paused mid-lemon squeeze, running through his options. Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe there was another Richie who lived in the area, maybe Eddie was hearing things, (maybe Eddie was doing some wishful thinking), maybe—

“ _I wanna know what love is!_ ” the customer that Carlos called Richie sang, goofy and off key, along with the radio.

So.

Definitely Eddie’s — _fuck_ , definitely Richie from the Bean.

Eddie got a glimpse of him now, he was in the next aisle, right on the other side of the shelf that divided the aisles, rifling through the candy bars. Eddie hadn't been spotted. As Eddie watched, half hidden due to his height and frozen in surprise, Richie picked up a Twix bar and used it as a microphone, lifting his head directly in Eddie’s direction and singing with show-offy passion, “ _I want you to show—_ “ his eyes met Eddie’s, “—holy fuck.”

Richie ducked his head immediately, Eddie heard what sounded like a series of tiny crashes, like at least a dozen chocolate bars falling to the tile.

Fuck fuck fuck.

He judged the distance between himself and the door, and immediately questioned why he was so desperately searching for an escape route—he’d told Richie they were good, they were hardly friends to begin with, it was no big deal. Still. Everything about Richie felt like a big fucking deal. Ever since the night that he and Richie had almost gone for drinks—which is what friends _do_ , Eddie reminded himself—and Sandy had swung by the café, something heavy and gross coiled around inside of Eddie’s stomach and made his head go all foggy where matters of Richie were concerned. He wanted to squirm out of his skin.

Eddie decided to make ahasty retreat to the side of the store, where Bill, blissfully unaware, was still playing with Pigeon—because running felt like the simpler option compared to the alternative of owning up to the weird fucking hoops Eddie was currently jumping through to avoid a man who’d done nothing absolutely nothing wrong— when he heard a feminine voice from behind him.

“Hey, Eddie, right?” He turned, feeling caught, and saw Beverly pop into his aisle. He hadn’t had a full conversation with her, really. On the days that she was working with Richie, Richie occupied most of Eddie’s attention, and on the days Richie wasn’t there—well, neither was Eddie. Coincidentally. But she had a lovely, easy air about her—she smiled often, she gave as good as she got when it came to Richie and his jokes, she always gave Eddie a warm look when he came in, always remembered his name. She was also quite possibly the prettiest girl that Eddie had ever seen in his life, so.

“Uh, yeah, hey Beverly.”

“Hey, Richie!” Beverly called, louder than she needed to be, since by the hushed crinkling of candy wrappers the next aisle over, he was still hiding out, and still well within hearing distance. Another thought flashed through Eddie’s mind briefly—is he hiding from me? “Rich! Eddie’s here! C’mon, say hi.”

The candy wrapper rustling stopped, and Eddie saw Richie’s head pop back up from across the display dividing the aisles, watched him walk the length of it and then round the corner so he could stand beside Beverly. He looked tense, ready to bolt. Probably looked exactly how Eddie felt. “Eddie from the Bean?” Richie said too-casually, and glanced in Eddie’s direction. “Oh yeah. Get a load of this guy.” He smiled, half at Eddie, half at the floor.

“Hey, Richie,” Eddie said, started to wave, but completely fucking forgot that his arms were laden with lemons, and one tumbled to the tile and rolled over to Richie’s foot. Eddie wanted to die, a little. “Um.”

“I got it,” Richie said, again to the floor, as he bent to pick it up. “Your lemon, good sir,” He said in a British accent as he tossed it back.

Eddie caught it, “uh, thanks.”

Richie apparently thought that the crate of apples across the aisle from Eddie was the most interesting thing in the whole store, the whole world even, because he didn’t look away from it for a while, even as Beverly kept giving him glances and nudges with the tip of her boot.

Eddie cleared his throat.

“Um,” he said, at the same time Richie said, “So—“

“Shit, sorry, what were you going to say?” Eddie said.

“No, no, you go first.”

“Oh. Um. It’s—“ Eddie had absolutely no clue what he _actually_ wanted to say, except that he wanted to say something that would keep Richie there. He felt a bit of mental whiplash—first he wanted to flee, then he wanted to stand there in a silence that was frankly overflowing with confusing level of tension, awkwardness off the charts. It made no sense. None at all.

Bill saved him from having to come up with an excuse, by coming up behind him and clapping his shoulder—Eddie was so distracted that he nearly jumped out of his skin—and said, “hey, all set birthday boy?”

Ben came up on his other side, with a carton of Oreos and two jars of peanut butter in his shopping basket, saying, “Hey guys, I didn’t know if you wanted creamy or crunchy so I just got bo—“

Eddie looked over, wondering why Ben had just completely lost his train of thought, when he saw that Ben’s eyes had gone all soft again, his eyebrows turned up, his cheeks flushed a light pink under the fluorescents. “Hi,” he said, sounding breathless, and Eddie followed his gaze to see it land, right onto Beverly.

Foreigner blared over the speakers— _I wanna know what love is, I think you can show me_.

Jesus Christ.

While Ben was having his Nora Ephron Moment, Bill introduced himself, and Beverly and Richie acknowledged him with a wave.

It felt weird, it made a hidden part of Eddie feel uncomfortable, like Richie belonged in _his_ sphere, and Bill was in another sphere, and having the two worlds collide meant that Eddie had to give up a little bit of something he couldn’t name. But that made no sense—Bill was his best friend, Richie was his sort-of friend, Eddie wasn’t giving up anything.

He shook off the feeling and was about to make an excuse to leave (and tear Ben away from the girl who was making his brain completely melt) when Richie stepped forward, just slightly, like he thought better of it as soon as he put his foot down.

“Oh, it’s your birthday?” 

Eddie chuckled at the ground, feeling lost and not knowing why. “Um, yeah.”

He looked up at Richie in time to see a smile. “Happy birthday, then, Eddie.”

Eddie couldn’t help but return it. “Thanks.”

Then, “The little munchkin is growing up.” His smile spread into a shit-eating grin—and it was like a dam broke somewhere in Eddie's brain, it was like the feeling when the water clears from your ears after a dive—all that heavy muffling just falls away and you could hear things clearly again.

“Oh fuck off.”

“You know, you might be growing up in the, like, aging sense, but I don’t know if your body got the memo because vertically? You’re a little stunted, man.”

“Yeah well maybe your sense of humor should grow up, it’s stuck in fucking middle school.”

“Eds gets off a good one!” Richie laughed, and in that sound, the weight between them faded, they were back to sparring at the table in the Naked Bean, pushing buttons, hiding smiles, and Eddie felt—relief?

Bill looked between them, a quizzical twist to his mouth, and put his arm around Ben. “Alright, Eddie, we’ll go pay.” Eddie’d completely forgotten that he’d been holding lemons until Bill slid them into their basket and lead Ben over to the checkstand before he lost it and completely swooned.

Eddie still smiled, still felt that ease, and he was about to open his mouth to say something else to Richie when another girl joined them in the aisle. A tall, willowy girl, with crimped hair and a sunshine smile and bangles on her wrists that made music with every movement.

Eddie suddenly sank again.

Sandy stepped up between Richie and Beverly, slung her arm around the other girl’s shoulders and nudged Richie with a bag of Lay’s. “Hey, kid!” Richie said, grinning and trading her some candy from his basket for her chips. “Eddie! You remember Sandy, right?”

Eddie pursed his lips, pretended like he had to think about it. He felt mean. He didn’t care. “Hmm—“

“We met at the coffee shop?” Sandy prodded.

Eddie frowned in false thought.

“Yeah, Eds, remember? Sandy, my—“

“Oh, yeah, _that_ Sandy. I remember.”

She knocked her head against Beverly’s and just smiled. “Small world, huh?”

“It’s his birthday,” Beverly told the newcomer with a friendly nudge, and it was like hearing it again sparked something in Richie because he suddenly clapped his hands together and made his way towards Eddie.

“It’s your birthday!”

“We’ve established this.”

“Shit, Eddie,” Richie grinned, “let me get you something!”

“Richie, you _really_ don’t have to—“

“No, I insist.” He looked for a second like he was going to sling his arm around Eddie’s shoulders, or ruffle his hair, but he held Eddie’s gaze for a beat too long and something insecure shadowed his face. Richie shoved his hands into his pockets and cleared his throat instead. “C’mon, Eddie,” Richie started browsing the shelves of the bodega, holding up random objects for Eddie’s approval and making a game of it. “I’ll keep bugging you until you let me.” There were still traces of that out-of-character insecurity at the edges of his smile, and if Eddie focused too much on that his mind would wander to places he’d never want to go—but his enthusiasm was a contagion. Eddie followed him around the store.

He felt at least one pair of curious eyes tracking his movements from where his friends stood near the checkstand (eyes that were without a doubt Bill’s, because Eddie didn’t have to look to know with certainty that Ben’s had gone all moony in Bev’s direction).

“I’m sorry I made fun of your height,” Richie said, as he brandished a box of Nerds for Eddie’s consideration. Eddie shook his head, and Richie put them back.

“No you’re not.”

“You’re right, I’m not. _But_ , if it makes you feel any better—“ he held up an issue of _People_ magazine with Princess Diana staring solemnly out at them, and when Eddie shook his head Richie said, “—no? You don’t wanna read about Lady Di? Look,” he pointed to a little graphic featuring another member of the English aristocracy that Eddie couldn’t recognize, and Richie put on a clipped Queen Elizabeth voice when he said, “Camilla would like to have a word with you!” He let the accent drop as Eddie covered his mouth with his hands, trying to hide his smile, but the spark in Richie’s eyes told Eddie that he hadn’t really hidden it at all—that maybe he hadn't actually tried. He liked looking at Richie after he made a joke, the way Richie grinned after scoring a laugh, all wide open, an unbridled, almost childish gleam in eyes that swam behind thick lenses—

Eddie just didn’t like that he liked looking at Richie. Didn’t like it at all.

“Not a gossip rag kinda guy, huh?” Richie put the magazine back on the rack, but left it crooked. Eddie followed after him and set it right. “But then what do you read when you’re taking a—“

“Beep beep!” Eddie parroted back words he’d heard Beverly say a hundred times to Richie in the café, before he remembered that he’d only heard them because he was eavesdropping. On their conversations.

Like a _creeper_.

Fucking damnit.

Richie’s already wild grin got wilder, he looked almost—proud? Eddie hoped his embarrassment hadn’t triggered a sympathetic nervous reaction, hoped that his cheeks weren’t visibly flushed from the extra blood his heart stubbornly pumped through him, his brain that screamed fight-or-flight. “Shut up,” he snapped.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“Thank god for small miracles.”

Richie put a hand to his chest in a facsimile of offense. “You wound me!” He dropped the act and wove his way through the bodega with practiced familiarity. “Now that you’re done insulting me, what I _was_ gonna say is that if it makes you feel better, you’re fun-sized. You’re a little cutie.”

Eddie just glared, not trusting himself to open his mouth and speak coherent words after hearing _you’re a little cutie_ from Richie. Richie cleared his throat a little, something like the insecurity from before passing across his face again, but he continued, “Besides, ever seen _Back to the Future?_ That movie fuckin’ rocks. One of my favorites from when I was a kid. And Marty McFly is fun-sized just like you.”

“Marty McFly?” said Eddie, voice dry.

“He cleans up with _all_ the ladies, that motherfucker. Get it, because he—“

“Don’t even.”

“Fine, I won’t even.” He held his hands up in surrender, before quickly adding, “besides the only motherfucker here is me. Because I’m fucking your mother.”

Richie dodged out of the way before Eddie could swat his head with a magazine, erupting into a fit of giggles that sounded so out-of-place coming out of a six-foot-something twenty-one year old that Eddie couldn’t help but laugh too, despite himself.

“Hey Rich, I figured out what I want from you for my birthday.”

Richie straightened slightly, still smiling. Eddie was sure he imagined seeing Richie’s throat bob nervously. “What?”

“I want for you to shut the fuck up,” joked Eddie. There was no bite behind it, but Richie didn’t laugh along straight away. There was a beat where Eddie tried and failed to read his expression, he could hear the blood rushing in his head—then the tension broke when Richie did an exaggerated pantomime of zipping up his lips and throwing away the key.

His silence lasted all of a second (which honestly relieved Eddie more than he’d admit— the melodramatic chorus of “I Want to Know What Love Is” seemed to amplify the sinking heavy something that swirled between them) when his eyes widened with a burst of energy, “Oh! I got it.” He waved a Mars bar around in Eddie’s face triumphantly.

It was Eddie’s favorite type of candy.

He nodded.

“Fuck yeah,” Richie said, with no small amount of pride. “Okay, Spaghetti-O—“

“—I’ll _end_ you—“

“—Let’s make a deal. I will buy you this delicious birthday treat if,” he paused for effect, “you can reach it.”

Richie smirked as held the chocolate bar between them, Eddie glared up at it.

“And I’ll sweeten the deal. No more short jokes. How’s that?”

“Fuck you, you fucking dick, are we back in fucking middle school,” Eddie said, but leapt to grab it anyway. He came close, but Richie switched gears and stood on his tiptoes, moving the bar over his shoulder in an effort to keep it as faraway from Eddie as possible.

“Fuck off, that’s cheating!”

“Is there a rulebook for shit like this?”

“Fuck you!” Eddie glared up at Richie, and apparently the sight was funny enough to shift his chuckles to full blown laughter, and Eddie took this momentary weakness to launch onto his tiptoes and get one of his hands around Richie’s arm, tugging it closer and closer until it seemed like Richie wasn’t resisting at all by the time Eddie's grabbed the Mars bar, victorious.

Richie _wasn’t_ resisting. His arm was warm beneath Eddie’s hand, even through his layers of clothing. Eddie let go like it had burned him, took a step back.

All the weight that had been lifted from the air around them came crashing back down with a vengeance, Eddie felt it pressing down. His head spun— _fuck_. Richie’d only been in his personal space for like, two seconds tops, but it was already sending his head reeling back to standing on the sidewalk just an hour earlier, with the lips of the girl he knew he should _want_ to kiss against his own, mind wandering to—

 _Fuck_.

“I took Myra out tonight. She kissed me,” Eddie said before he could stop himself. _Dumbass dumbass you’re a fucking dumbass_ he told himself, and resolved that he wouldn’t say anything more about 0.2 seconds before he added, “I think we’re going out again tomorrow.”

He was speaking so fast it probably sounded like “itookmyraouttonightshekissedme” instead of intelligible English, and it took one moment, then two for Richie to blink in understanding. “Oh. Myra, she’s your—?”

“My girlfriend."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Myra.”

“Sorry, couldn’t quite catch her name, Monica you said?” Richie joked, but it fell flat. Eddie laughed in a single, short burst, just as flat.

The dumb love song was somehow still playing and Eddie kind of just wanted to kick the lead singer of Foreigner in the dick—whoever he was—for making every little silence between them so fucking loud.

“Well I’m glad things are going well,” said Richie.

“Yeah. Me too. I’m glad too.”

Another painful pause.

Richie said, “Well—“ at the same time Eddie blurted, “I gotta go, my friends are kind of impatient.”

If Richie noticed that Bill was happily playing with Pigeon the bodega cat and Ben’s dimple was cuter than ever as he talked to Beverly and Sandy in the beer aisle, and neither looked in any hurry to leave, he mercifully didn’t say anything.

“Okay. Happy birthday again.”

“Thanks.” Eddie swallowed down the lump in his throat. “Have fun with Beverly. And Sandy.”

And then he turned his back, called out for Bill and Ben to follow him out the door, and left the Mars bar on the counter.

“See you at the Bean?”

Eddie didn’t look over his shoulder as he responded, “Sure.”

"See ya, Eds."

"Don't call me that." It felt too final.

Fuck.

—

“I’m telling you, Mikey!” Bill slurred happily into Eddie’s headset, waving around a bottle of beer like it was a conductor’s baton. “You should have seen it!”

Eddie grumbled into his own bottle. “’S nothing,” he said, although Mike was about 450 miles and couldn’t hear him.

He was sitting on the couch, knees tucked tight to his chest, while Ben sprawled along the length of it. MTV was on, those subtitles still rolling along the screen, and every now and then Ben would nudge at Eddie to watch a music video he particularly liked. They’d called Mike about half-an-hour ago, and after a very sloppy rendition of “Happy Birthday,” they passed the phone around so everyone had a turn to catch up. Eddie’d opened a bottle while on the line, and Mike had done the same on his end, and they’d both said “clink clink” and taken synchronized sips. It wasn’t nearly the same as having him here in person, but it was enough. It was Bill’s turn to hog the phone, and he was cracking himself up, snorting beer up his nose every time he made himself laugh.

They were finishing off the last of the beers after getting the party started by taking shots of the whiskey—except Eddie didn’t have shot glasses, so they ended up just passing the bottle around and taking pulls (which was an extremely inefficient way of keeping track of alcohol consumption).

Bill was crying—not because he was emotional, but because Ben had tried to teach him his trick with the lemons (you’d squeeze lemon juice in your eye and be able to chug liquor like nobody’s business) but Bill had somehow squeezed too much juice in his eyes and they were still leaking tears fifteen minutes later.

Suffice to say. They were well and hammered.

“Seriously Mikey! His mom! _Exact-aly_ like his mom!”

“Shuddup,” Eddie pouted into his beer.

“Hey Eddie,” Ben said to the ceiling. He had a loopy smile on his face.

“Hmmphf?”

“Can you introduce me to your friend’s friend?”

“He’s not my friend. He’s my _barista_.”

“Seemed like your friend.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie said, but it sounded more like shuddafuckup.

“Can you introduce me to her though? Like officially?”

“Fucking fine Ben, I’ll introduce you.”

“Thank you Eddie. Happy birthday. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Thinking about Ben liking Bev lead to thinking about Eddie liking—

And he hated how the thought squirmed around inside of him.

So he made grabby hands until Ben passed over the bottle of whiskey and Eddie could drink it all away.

—

A week later, Eddie was on the phone with Myra.

It was a Sunday, and the weekend was melting away into the third week of November. Eddie’s last class was Monday afternoon, and then he’d be free of any academic responsibilities for a blissful week—the first full week off since the semester started in August.

He felt like he used to when he’d weaned himself off of his fake inhaler in high school in order to go out for track. Mike helped him, and they’d run through the Hanlon property together before school. Every time Eddie felt his lungs constrict, his throat close up, that familiar rattle as his stream of oxygen shrunk down to a trickle, Mike would have him put his hands up against his head, stretch out his chest as they breathed together. “You’ve always been able to breathe on your own,” Mike would say. “This is the hard part, but you’ll get through it, and you’ll breathe easy.” He wasn’t wrong—once Eddie learned how to breathe through his panic, his body stopped fighting him, his lungs started to work. He’d breathe easy.

And as far as Eddie was concerned, his semester up until this point had been one prolonged bout of panic and he couldn’t fucking wait to breathe easy.

He hummed along in agreement with whatever it was that Myra was saying—he felt bad about his brain wandering off while in a conversation with her, but it was just something that became a routine. They went on at least two or three dates a week, but still hadn’t managed to find anything they actually had in common beyond the cursory field of study. She was content to talk, though, and Eddie was all right with pretending to listen, which made her happy enough to let him (make him) walk her home every night.

They still kissed, and their kissing had migrated indoors, to Myra or Eddie’s apartment—and all the while Eddie would be petrified at the possibility of letting his thoughts drift off for even a _second_ , but more often than not all the effort he put into avoiding the thought of a certain someone just made that certain someone all the more present in his mind.

Myra was getting bolder, too. Her hands started to wander, but every time those short fingers danced around the waistline of his pants Eddie would immediately freeze, push her off, rush to the door with a half-baked excuse and hardly a goodbye. He wondered how long she’d put up with it before giving him an ultimatum, because it certainly _seemed_ like she wanted sex.

He wondered why the thought of it made his legs feel like jelly in all the worst ways.

It wasn’t her fault. She was nice enough, and her apartment was very neat and tastefully decorated. She was an excellent cook, and knew the best recipes, and every once in a while, when Eddie let his guard down, he found himself half-way to having a good time with her.

She did have a fixation with the quantity of over-the-counters he had stashed in his medicine cabinet, and once when she’d seen him after a jog, cheeks all red and face warm, she’d been almost rabid in her attempts to bring him into urgent care—but she was going to be a _nurse_. This were all things she would know about, would care about.

Eddie couldn’t hold it against her.

“—and Ann got a _cat_ , Ed, a _cat_ , and I’m telling you it’s just the _cutest_ little thing, just so fluffy and _cute_ —“

Cute. Cutie. Fluorescent lighting, Foreigner, _Marty McFly is just as fun-sized as you, you’re a little cutie_.

Eddie blinked.

“—and if it wouldn’t flare up your allergies—“

Eddie wasn’t allergic to cats.

“—wouldn’t it just be the greatest idea to have a little kitten around? Wouldn’t it, Eddie? Our own little cutie?”

 _You’re a little cutie. Marty McFly is just as fun-sized as you_.

“It sure would, Marty.”

Fuck.

Motherfucking fuck.

“…Eddie?”

—

He was seven years old.

He was playing outside, and Bill was there. It had been raining, there were puddles all around. His hands felt slick with mud. But he looked at Bill, and Bill seemed like the tallest boy in all the world. The strongest. His eyes were round, and kind, and blue, and he was patient with Eddie’s asthma because Eddie was patient with his stutter and maybe also because he loved Eddie and Eddie loved him.

They were laughing, and all Eddie could hear was them laughing, and Eddie remembered that Bill reminded him of the princes in the cartoons they played on the television in Miss Morley’s daycare every day after school.

And then he felt arms around him, strong arms, arms that held onto him so hard they hurt, and he heard his momma’s voice, and she was saying, “Look at you, playing in the filth! You’re a delicate boy, not a dirty boy, don’t be a dirty boy Eddie, dirty boy—“

And then he was being lifted and lifted and lifted—

And he flew right up through the floor into the gymnasium at Derry High. Clusters of balloons adorned every corner, gauzy streamers hung from the rafters. He was wearing a suit.

Ben stood beside him at the punch bowl, they watched as Mike and Bill danced with the girls. Lipgloss smiles, sequins catching light, the smell of Aquanet and perfume—

Then there was a _pop!_ like every balloon in the room exploded at once, and when Eddie opened his eyes, all of the girls were gone. Ben was no longer beside him. The boys stood, a hundred-strong on the basket-ball court turned dance floor. A solid block of body spray and too-large hand-me-down neckties lined up like Ben’s toy soldiers, standing at attention.

“Would you like to dance with me, Eddie?” they all said as one.

Eddie blinked

And

When he opened his eyes he was in church.

He knew this church. It was St. Stephen’s United, off Canal Street. Father Franklin was the pastor.

Eddie knew that he wasn’t a little boy any more, but his mother stood beside him and it was like she took up all the air in the room and he couldn’t feel like he was anything but small, too small, too feeble, a delicate, delicate boy…

On his other side was Myra, and she was dressed to match his mother, and they were leading him down an aisle hemmed in by packed pews. Everyone was in their Sunday finest. Eddie wore the suit they buried his father in.

“It’s time to take your medicine, Eddie bear,” his mother and Myra said as one.

“But I’m not sick,” he said, as the churchgoers in their pews all turned to look at him.

“You’re all sick,” said Mother/Myra. “You’re all filthy, filthy boys. You all need to take your medicine.”

The people in the pews were in funeral suits. They looked at Eddie and all he saw were sores, open, bleeding, gaunt cheeks, bones and skin.

“Filthy, filthy boys,” said Mother/Myra.

Eddie looked down at his hands.

“Filthy.”

They were covered in lesions.

As they approached the altar, the church choir stood and began to sing a song that Eddie had heard in a flickering fluorescent oasis on a cold night in New York, a song sang along to by a beautiful boy, a song that made Eddie hate himself for finding the boy beautiful at all.

Mother/Myra stopped walked, kept chanting _filthy filthy filth_

The pastor stood, and Eddie knew it must be Father Franklin but his face was too blurry to see, even up close. He approached Eddie. “Are you ready to take your medicine, Eddie bear?” The pastor’s lips moved, but it was his mother’s voice that came out.

An extended hand. Holding a blue inhaler.

Eddie looked at it, long and hard, as the choir sang their song, and then the faceless pastor leaned in close, too close and then even closer, smelled like coffee, whispered to him—a breath away from being a kiss, he felt the air against his lips—

_“Eds, would your mother approve?”_

Eddie woke up screaming, and cried until morning.

—

The next day Eddie bought a french press coffee maker at Sears because the sales associate told him it was a good deal.

The coffee he made tasted like piss. But a bag of ground coffee was cheap.

He was saving money.

He was being frugal.

He was making the best choice.

—

“I’m sorry, what, Bill?” Eddie said, following his friend around the apartment he shared with Ben. Bill pulled clothes out of dressers and folded them carefully into a suitcase.

“We’re going home.”

“Yes, I heard that part. I’m more concerned about the _we_.”

“C’mon, it’s a road trip. You, me, and Ben. It’ll be fun.”

“No.”

“Eddie. What else are you going to do here all Thanksgiving break?”

Eddie stopped. Paused. Home was 450 miles away. That distance from his apartment—from the business below it— sounded suddenly like a safe haven. _This is the hard part. Then you can breathe easy_. Maybe miles and miles would make it easier to breathe.

"You won't tell her I'm there?"

"Fuck, of course we won't, man."

“Do I get to drive?”

“Of course you get to drive.”

“Fine. I’ll go with you to fucking Derry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to the Eddie Kaspbrak Gay Crisis. 
> 
> The next update will be on February 8/9!
> 
> also this fic is going to be longer than three chapters, most likely four! hope y'all will stick around
> 
> \--  
> follow me on twitter @sloppybxtchh for more clown movie foolishness!
> 
> please let me know what you think, every comment gives a turtle god its wings <3


	3. the fastest kid in derry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> coming home for the holidays is always complicated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter's a little angstier than the others, so tw for panic attacks and sonia kaspbrak's a+ parenting

Derry unfolded itself before them, and all Eddie wanted to do was jerk the wheel to the left and speed all the way back to New York without ever looking back.

Snow dusted the ground, sprinkled the too-familiar old buildings with a layer of innocent white. The streets were quiet, peaceful. Stores had already put cheery Christmas displays in their windows, holiday lights hung between the lamp-posts across Main Street, a crown over the town. It was picturesque. It was post-card perfect, small town New England.

Eddie knew better.

“I like this view better from the rear view mirror,” mumbled Eddie.

“I’m so excited to see Mike,” said Ben from the backseat. He’d been designated the road trip DJ, and was shuffling through the cassettes Bill kept back there in order to find the perfect musical bookend for their road trip. Eddie had a feeling it’d be New Kids on the Block, and wished it wouldn’t be, but kept his mouth shut.

“Oh speaking of,” said Bill, “I promised Mike I’d pick him up something from Keene’s on our way into town. And didn’t you say that you needed an extra toothbrush, Eddie?”

Eddie nodded. The last place he really wanted to go was into Keene’s drug store—it brought up memories he’d rather keep tightly shut under lock and key—but oral hygiene was one of Eddie’s many passions and he didn’t want to risk getting fucking gingivitis because he was too afraid to walk into his childhood pharmacy.

So he found a spot to park the Datsun, hummed in acknowledgement when Bill peeled off into a phonebooth to ring Mike and make sure he wasn’t forgetting anything, and tried not to wince when he heard the jingle of the bells above the pharmacy store door herald his arrival. Bing Crosby sang Christmas carols tinnily over the store speakers.

A woman with frizzy blonde curls leaned against the pharmacy counter in the back of the store, popping her gum. She looked suspiciously like Greta Keene, and Eddie was quick to duck his head and busy himself with browsing through the different toothbrush brands.

After a moment, Eddie heard what sounded like Bill’s voice coming from outside of the store and looked up in interest.

And then all of the blood in his body froze.

Bill stood on the sidewalk in front of the store, but his figure was dwarfed by a sight so familiar that Eddie’s stomach sank to his feet. Sonia Kaspbrak looked almost exactly as she had the day that Eddie had left in 1994—the woman whose presence was so gigantic that she had eclipsed every other thing in Eddie’s life, shrinking and shrinking and shrinking in the rear view mirror of Bill’s hand me down Datsun. He hadn’t known his mother could ever be made to look so small, even if it was just a trick of the eyes.

He remembered his childhood, spent in a crawling state of suffocation. She kept him in a cage, she held the keys, she told him exactly what to think and whenever he dared to question her she would yell then cry, yell then cry, yell then cry until Eddie was thrown into a state of emotional whiplash so confusing that he’d spend the rest of the night in tears, the rest of the week apologizing, the rest of the month torturing himself with the knowledge that he was a terrible boy who hurt the mother that loved him.

He remembered it all. Puffed-up hands that wrapped tight around his wrist, red acrylic nails tip-tip-tapping on the pharmacy counter, the soothing percussion of pill bottles handed to Eddie like a baby’s rattle— _you can’t play outside now Eddie, you can’t ride bikes with your friends Eddie, you can’t eat those, Eddie, you can’t listen to that kind of music Eddie, you can’t watch those kinds of shows, you can’t read those comics, you can’t play those games, you can’t be your own fucking person Eddie, because you’re a delicate boy, Eddie, don’t be a dirty boy, Eddie, don’t be filthy, don’t be rotten, don’t forget to love your mother, Eddie…_

All of that was bad enough, but it wasn’t the worst of it.

The worst of it was that Eddie loved her. That Eddie _believed_ her, even still. That eighteen years of hearing that he was weak and that he should be afraid—sandwiched between platitudes and pet names like the sugar that helped the medicine go down—was so deeply ingrained in everything he did that he wasn’t sure he’d ever break free entirely. Eighteen years of being told that he should be afraid of everything _did_ make him afraid. It made him believe her. The first year apart had been the hardest—if it weren’t for Ben and Bill, gently holding him through it, helping him find a solid place to stand, he’d have turned tail and fled back to the comforting crush of his mother’s arms, because at least it was familiar.

Even then, standing in Keene’s, separated from her by brick and mortar, Eddie felt that pull. He’d always love her. And that made her more dangerous than anything.

Bill caught Eddie’s eyes through the window, and Eddie understood the message that flashed in his eyes. _Go_. Get out before you get sucked into her orbit. Run.

Eyes still on the shadow of his mother in front of the store—knowing that the exit was blocked off and Bill could only stall for so long—Eddie felt his throat begin to tighten.

 _Run_ , he told himself. He’d always been fast.

Eddie tried to bolt further into the store, but instead barreled right into something warm and solid—a broad chest—with nearly enough force to knock them both to the ground. Hands found his elbows and steadied them both to their feet. Eddie’s breath was coming out in short gasps, but he was about ready to tear away from this stranger and find a place to run to when he realized it wasn’t a stranger at all.

“What the fuck?” Richie asked, hands still bracing Eddie’s elbows. He looked too surprised to joke.

_Don’t be a filthy boy, Eddie bear, don’t be—_

“—I—gotta—“

Eddie stepped back, breaking Richie’s hold. He spoke around his tightening throat. “I gotta—get the fuck—out of here.” He was too focused on escape to even begin to wrap his brain around the very good question of why the _fuck_ Richie was in Keene’s fucking drug store in Derry fucking Maine. 

“Are you okay?”

“I gotta—fucking _go_ ,” said Eddie, weaving around the aisles to the back of the store.

“The door’s that way—“ Eddie didn’t need to look at Richie to know that he was pointing to the front of the store. Eddie didn’t need to look to know that his mother would still be shadowing the sidewalk, and he didn’t need to hear her conversation with Bill to know that she was getting impatient.

She was probably coming in for her prescriptions—she used to come in for Eddie’s, long after he’d fought with her over the bitter truth that he’d never needed them to begin with, and she’d mail them to his old apartment in the city, with long letters in her spidery hand telling him that she loved him, was ashamed of him, and was afraid for him all in the span of a sentence. Bill hadn’t let Eddie give her his new address when he moved. They still called each other twice a week, as agreed.

She didn’t know he was in Derry. He didn’t know what she would do if she knew he was in Derry, what tricks she’d pull to keep him here forever. He knew that the best thing he could do for himself would be to make sure that she never got the opportunity to try.

His throat closed even further. He felt that too familiar pressure on his chest, the way his brain narrowed down into a painful chant of _I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t—_

Concern had driven the shock from Richie’s face, and he glanced to the front of the store for a fraction of a second before nodding and taking Eddie’s hand.

“All right, there’s an employee exit this way,” he said, leading Eddie by the hand past the prescription counter, past Greta and her bubblegum, past Mr. Keene’s turned back, then out into the alley behind the shop.

_I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe—_

(Eddie bear, aren’t you forgetting something? Eddie bear, don’t run, you’re too delicate to run, Eddie bear, don’t forget to take your medicine, Eddie bear, never leave home without your inhaler or you might die, Eddie bear don’t leave me, don’t leave me Eddie don’t leave me)

Eddie was going to die. He felt like he was going to die. It was like someone had shoved their manicured hand right into his ribcage and _squeezed_.

He tried to speak, but wheezed instead.

“Eddie? Shit, Eddie,” Richie’s face was close now, a little blurry because Eddie was pretty sure he was on the verge of tears. He felt one hand hover above his arm, the other near his cheek. “Are you okay?” Stupid question. “Do you need me to run in and get you something, like do you have an inhaler or—“

“— _No—“_ Eddie said as fiercely as he could through his closing windpipe.

"What do you need me to do? Jesus fuck, what do you need? Holy shit holy—" Richie's voice was approaching an octave that could only mean he was about five seconds away from a nervous breakdown himself, and Eddie shot him a mean glare that he hoped would be interpreted as _shut up and stop panicking you idiot._

He tried to remember what Mike used to tell him when they were younger—this is the hard part, then you can breathe easy. He tried to slow down the racing of his heart—tried to remind himself that this was all in his head, that his lungs worked just fine, that his body didn't need to compensate for perceived danger, that he was fine and he was safe and his lungs had never been broken—but _Eddie bear_ ran on repeat in his brain and all he could focus on was a parade of memories of his childhood under lock and key, the certainty that if she got her claws into him again she'd probably get him back—

“Hey,” said Richie, voice suddenly even and low. Eddie met his eyes. “Can I…?” Eddie looked down to see that Richie’s hand was extended towards him, palm up, an invitation. Eddie looked between it and Richie, looked at it like it had teeth and would bite, looked at it with the knowledge that it could spark a whole other kind of panic, Eddie looked at it knowing all of these things and took his hand anyway.

 _—I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe (_ Eddie bear don’t leave me Eddie bear you’re delicate Eddie bear you’re dirty) _I can’t —_

“Breathe with me okay?” said Richie, “You said you don’t need an inhaler and I believe you, so. Your lungs are fine, dude. Just, in and out and all that shit.” Richie took some exaggerated deep breaths, holding Eddie’s gaze the whole time, and Eddie tried to match Richie’s pace. Breathe in for four, hold for four, exhale for four. Repeat as needed. Just like during that summer at Hanlons’.

_—Eddie bear Eddie bear Eddie bear—_

_“_ Did I ever tell you about the time that I graffittied the wall back here? Tried to, anyway.” Richie’s voice was even, casual. His hand was warm and strong, and Eddie squeezed it tight, drawing whatever strength he could from it as he inhaled for four, held for four, exhaled for four. He didn’t want to break his rhythm to speak, so he just shook his head, because what the fuck, of course he hadn’t heard this story, he hadn’t even known Richie had ever been to Derry until about sixty seconds ago.

“Bev dared me. We did that all the time, man, just swapped dares because this town could be so fucking soul-sucking if we didn’t make our own fun, you know?”Breathe in for four, hold for four, exhale for four.

— _Eddie bear—I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I—_

Eddie felt Richie’s fingers tighten gently around his. In for four, hold for for, out for four. He squeezed back. “I think I was thirteen or fourteen. She got the spray paint, and we both picked this spot because Mr. Keene? Yeah _fuck_ that guy. Anyway, Bev went first even though it was technically my dare, she wanted in on the fun you know, and I can’t even remember what it was that she wrote, or I wrote, but I remember thinking mine was so fucking funny, like we’d get some real chucks outta that one, and so when Bev passed me the can—“ In for four, hold for four, out for four. Eddie felt his throat begin to loosen, felt the grip on his chest ease just slightly. He tried to breathe in for six the next time. “—I got a little too excited. Wasn’t the most careful back then— _shocking_ , I know, look at me, I’m the poster child for well-adjusted adult responsibility—“Eddie smiled, shaky, but it counted. In for six, hold for six, out for six. Richie smiled back.

“And, I uh,” Richie’s voice faded into embarrassed laughter before he tried again, “I didn’t realize I wasn’t actually pointing the nozzle at the wall…and—“ he laughed again, and Eddie breathed in for six, held for six, out for six “—I, uh, shit this is so embarrassing, promise not to tell anybody, okay Spaghetti? I’ll hold you to that, seriously dude.” Eddie’s head was beginning to clear, the panic lodged in his throat shook loose and faded away. In for six, hold for six, out for six.

“I, uh, I spray painted my own face.” Eddie’s eyes widened, and he squeezed instinctively down on Richie’s hand, hard. He reminded himself to breathe in for six, hold for six, out for six, but found that his body wasn’t fighting him nearly as much anymore. His body shook, riding out the waves of the storm that the sight of Sonia Kaspbrak had sent him into, but he was in the home stretch.

As Mikey would say, the hard part was over. Soon he’d breathe easy.

“I had my glasses, duh, and they took the brunt of it, and the nozzle wasn’t like, pointed straight at my face so it only really got one side of it,but _dude_ —“ Richie dissolved into giggles “—I looked fucking insane. My glasses were totally fucked, like one lens was totally painted over and the other was half covered, and I had this huge splotch of red paint all over the side of my face and it was all in my hair—“ he laughed again “—and of course Bevvie was losing her goddamn mind because it was so ridiculous, and of course I screamed, and so Mr. motherfucking Keene hears and comes barreling outside and shouting about calling the sheriff, blah blah blah—and man,” Richie sounded like he was going to continue the story but nothing else followed but amused chuckling.

Eddie’s lungs worked again. He found his voice and the first thing he said was, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me, are you telling me you _spray painted_ your _face_ Rich, oh my god that’s so fucking dumb I cannot even believe—do you know how harmful that shit is—“

“Hey there he is,” Richie said, a touch of something fond in his voice. “And cute of you to care, Eds, but look,” he framed his face with his free hand, “no permanent damage.” A moment passed between them. Eddie still felt himself shake, but less than he had before. Steadier on his feet. “You okay there?”

Eddie just nodded.

“Good. Because dude, I know it’s great to see me and I’m like, gorgeous or whatever, but I really didn’t mean to take your breath away.” There was a lopsided grin on Richie’s face, and Eddie felt himself heat up at the sight of it, at the realization that they were standing pretty close. At the fact that they were still holding hands.

Eddie released Richie’s hand immediately, backed against the wall as if it burned. “It’s not fucking funny.”

 _“_ I know,” said Richie, something hardening in his voice, in his expression. “Bad joke.”

There was another moment of silence, but less comfortable. In the worst kind of way. Eddie hated it.

At the same time that Richie started to say, “So—“ Eddie said “Why are you in Derry?”

Richie raised an eyebrow. “Same as you I’m guessing. I grew up here. Did you not hear the whole story back there or…?”

Eddie bit his tongue, nodded. “Oh. You grew up here.”

“Is there an echo out here or something? Jesus. Yes. I grew up here. Born and raised.”

“How come I’ve never seen you here before?”

“Maybe you never looked?” Richie ran a hand through his hair in frustration and looked down the length of the alley.

“Look, Eddie, as much as I’d love to sit here and play twenty questions it’s kind of fucking cold, so. If you’re really okay?”

Something had changed, and Eddie didn’t like it. There was a sharp edge to Richie’s voice, and it felt like Eddie was toeing a line he couldn’t see. “You-you didn’t need anything from Keene’s?”

Richie pulled a pack of Winston cigarettes from his jacket pocket. “All set.” He put them back.

Eddie watched him turn around and walk towards the mouth of the alley, where it fed into Canal Street, running perpendicular to Main. Eddie thought of his mother, still inside the pharmacy no doubt, and he thought of waiting around for Bill to find him, and then he thought of Richie, and the way Richie’d talked him through one of his panic attacks with the practiced ease of someone Eddie’d known all his life, how Richie made him feel safe in a terrifying sort of way. And how Richie had a car.

“Hey, Rich—“

“I’m parked down Canal,” said Richie without turning around, without slowing down. “C’mon, then.”

Richie drove a green 1987 Chevy Silverado, a lot like Mike’s. Eddie wasn’t sure why that surprised him.

“Can’t have this in New York,” said Richie as he leaned across the bench to unlock the passenger door from the inside. The inside was cleaner than Eddie expected, there was a little box of cassettes at his feet, Soundgarden played from the stereo. “So, where to?”

“Uh, the Denbroughs’?”

“Never been. You’ll have to be my guide,” said Richie.

Eddie gave him a few cursory instructions, busied himself with looking out the window at the streets he’d seen his whole life, at the town he’d both loved and hated, buildings he could draw from memory. “How’d you know about the door back there?”

“My best friend used to work at Keene’s. It was his first job one summer during high school and he hated it just as much as you’d fucking expect,” said Richie. “Plus I used to get the shit kicked out of me on the regular. Always useful to know your escape routes.”

Eddie swallowed, wasn’t sure what to say to that. They drove in silence for a while, downtown Derry passed by to the soundtrack of “Black Hole Sun.”

“So how come I’ve never seen you before?” Eddie repeated, as they drove by St. Stephen’s. “Derry isn’t that big. I feel like I’d remember.” Someone like you, is what he wanted to add, if he wasn’t a coward.

“Like I said, Eds,” Richie shrugged a shoulder, “maybe you just weren’t looking.”

“We don’t even know each other’s last names, maybe—“

“Kaspbrak.”

Eddie blinked. “Huh?” He asked, voice thick.

“Your full name’s Eddie Kaspbrak. Just because you never noticed me, doesn’t mean I never noticed you.” Richie’s voice was even, but there was something heavy beneath it as he turned onto Jackson street, never taking his eyes off the road. Eddie didn’t know why, but he really wanted Richie to screw vehicular safety and just _look_ at him. “You ran track all through high school. My dad used to run too, so we never missed a meet. I always thought you were so fucking fast. Fastest kid in Derry.”

Eddie opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out.

They drove in silence for a heavy few seconds, before Richie asked, “so, which house?”

“Uh, the one up ahead on the left. With the porch swing.”

Richie pulled up in front of Bill’s house, put the truck in park. He still kept his eyes on the road ahead. “See you around, Eddie. Or not, I guess, that’s up to you,” he chuckled, but the sound was bitter and dry.

“Um, thanks for the ride.” Eddie opened the door, and slid out of the cab, closing it gently behind him. He took one step towards the Denbroughs before he changed his mind, turned around, and climbed back inside of the truck. Richie gave him a surprised glance. “Wait, no. Are you mad at me or something?”

Richie ran a hand through his hair and scoffed, “I mean, fucking kinda.”

Eddie blinked. “Oh.”

“Yeah, Eddie, _oh_.” Richie tightened his grip on the steering wheel, Eddie could see the white of his knuckles. “You’re so hot and cold, man, one minute you’re talking to me, the next minute you’re ignoring me. One minute we’re having a good time, the next you just totally fucking freeze up and can’t even look at me. It’s bullshit, man. You can’t just—I don’t know, it’s really god damn confusing, for one thing, and shit,” he looked down, laughed humorlessly. “It doesn’t feel great when the guy you’ve been trying to be friends with for like, a while, can’t make his mind up about you. So, when you do make up your mind, let me know. Otherwise, this whole emotional rollercoaster bullshit is too much for me.”

Eddie didn’t know what to say, didn’t move. Richie leaned over him to open up the passenger side door. “Happy Thanksgiving, Eddie,” he said, and as Eddie stood on the Denbroughs’ front lawn and watched the green pickup get smaller and smaller and eventually turn off onto Witcham, he tried to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach.

—

Later that night, the four boys sprawled together in Bill’s living room, bathed in the low light of his television. Three half-empty boxes of pizza were stacked on the coffee table, the low murmur of _Friends’_ canned laugh track was the only sound in the room besides Bill and Ben’s content snoring from one couch. Mike and Eddie shared the other, and Eddie gently nudged Mike’s leg with his foot.

“Hey Mike?” Eddie half-whispered.

Mike turned to him, eyes sleepy. “Mmm?”

Eddie spoke around a lump in his throat, “I feel like I’m a bad person, I feel like I just keep hurting people.”

Mike seemed suddenly more alert, his eyes wide open. He leaned over and rested a strong hand on Eddie’s shoulder. It was a comfort. “Hey, Eddie. Is this about what happened earlier with your mom? Because Bill filled me in and—“

“No,” Eddie shook his head, still whispering. “It’s someone else. And I just—I just feel like I’m being a coward, or fucking selfish or something, and that I’m too caught up in being scared of being honest with myself, or for doing what I want, what makes me happy—“

“Is this about Myra?” asked Mike gently.

Eddie just shook his head.

“Oh. Well, Kaspbrak, I’ve known you since middle school and I can say with total confidence that you’re one of the most caring guys I know. Seriously. You’d like, fucking obliterate anyone that messed with us, but when it comes to the people you care about? You never let us forget how much you love us, you never hurt us on purpose. And being afraid of something doesn’t make you a bad person.” Mike’s gaze was gentle, steady. “We both know how you grew up, Eddie. You grew up being taught that you should be terrified of everything that you wanted to do. But you broke free of that, you stood up to your mom when she lied about your asthma, when she wouldn’t let you run. You left her and moved to New York. Man,” Mike shook his head and let out an impressed chuckle, “I don’t know if I’d be brave enough to do that.”

“I’m not brave,” said Eddie, voice small. _I’m delicate. I’m a coward._

“Are you fucking kidding me man? You’re the bravest guy I know. My old man used to tell me that fearless and brave aren’t the same thing, Eddie, and I believe that. You were afraid every time, but you pushed yourself through it anyways, you came out ahead, you got through the hard part even though it terrified you. And if that’s not fucking bravery, I don’t know what is.”

Eddie sniffed. “Fuck you, Mikey, you’re gonna make me cry,” he said. “I love you.”

“I love you too man,” Mike patted his shoulder. “But go the fuck to sleep, I have to drive home to feed the sheep in the morning.”

—

The first thing that Eddie did the next day was borrow the Denbroughs’ phone to make a call to New York.

Bill stood right in front of him, a firm hand on his shoulder, silent support.

In for six, hold for six, out for six.

The line picked up after two rings. Eddie inhaled slowly through his nose.

“Uh, hi. This is Eddie. I think we should talk.”

—

Bill cheered and whooped out of the window of his Datsun as they roared down Main Street. It reminded Eddie of when they were kids and Bill would tear through the streets of Derry on his bike Silver, Eddie tucked behind him on the package carrier, shouting boyishly into the wind, laughing as it nipped their noses and cheeks. It was the closest Eddie ever came to feeling invincible.

Ben cheered too, ruffled Eddie’s hair, celebrated his newfound freedom even if he didn’t understand it.

“How’s it feel, Eddie?” asked Bill, “Being a free man?”

Eddie chuckled self-consciously. “Pretty good.”

Bill swatted Eddie’s shoulder, “Couldn’t hear you, man!”

Eddie laughed and yelled, “Pretty _fucking_ good!” into the wind.

Unease still followed him through the streets of Derry after his close encounter at Keene’s yesterday, but it was the day before Thanksgiving, and Eddie knew that his mother always drove out to Dexter to visit her sisters on this day, to give them all enough time to prep for dinner, so for now, he let himself bask in the unbridled joy of being young and dumb and free with two of his best friends in the world.

Ben had suggested checking out a movie at the Aladdin before going out for drinks to celebrate Eddie’s sudden stroke of courage, so after coordinating everything with Mike, they piled back into Bill’s car and set off. Doubt still nagged at his mind, doubt that had certainly been planted by his mother and then tended to by Myra’s nitpicking, that he was pushing away the only people who would ever have his best interests at heart—but then he looked sidelong at Bill, bright and grinning in the seat beside him, hair catching the hazy winter light, and he looked at Ben, sweet and sunny in the backseat, and he realized that he’d done precisely what he needed to do, and—even better—it had been _his_ decision.

Bill found a spot for the car and they headed out onto the sidewalk, when Eddie caught sight of a familiar green pickup nearby, parked in front of the arcade.

It was time for him to make another decision. He set his jaw.

“Go on ahead guys, save me a seat. I’ll be there in a few.”

Eddie shouldered open the door to the arcade. It was emptier than Eddie remembered it being during sunnier months. Eddie spotted him right away—tall body hunched over Street Fighter, head bent in concentration, practiced hands moving expertly across the buttons.

Decision time.

“Rich,” Eddie said softly, watched as Richie’s shoulders tensed. His fingers faltered on the controls and Eddie saw an obnoxious YOU LOSE flash across the screen. Richie turned, looked first at the floor before dragging his gaze slowly, reluctantly, up to Eddie’s.

“So. I’ve made up my mind.”

“Yeah?”

Eddie grinned. “Yeah. Come to the movies with us. Right now.”

Richie tried to tamp down a smile. “No takebacks, you hear me Kaspbrak?”

“No takebacks.”

The smile broke across Richie’s face, wild and relieved and infectious. Eddie smiled back.

“If the popcorn’s on you, I’m in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys i pinky promise that stan is in this we just haven't met him yet because of eddie's pov
> 
> next chapter coming out on the 11/12!
> 
> follow me on twitter @sloppybxtchh for more clown movie nonsense, and seriously please comment your thoughts! they make my whole day and i love reading about what you guys think so far
> 
> this story is also getting longer than i anticipated so it'll most likely be five chapters!

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on twitter at @sloppybxtchh for more updates and clown movie-related fun
> 
> every comment gives a cosmic turtle god its wings ♡


End file.
